Berlin and getting organized. I must be riding the metro today, going from meeting to meeting, frantically fighting the depression that is luring in every corner of this city. It is dangerous to be here! How exciting! Dangerous, despite all the friendly people that seem to care about you because you can program their computers. Dangerous, despite all the good friends that seem to care a lot about you because you can stay with them, despite all the smiles you get from far friends that are quite busy. Je regrette, et j’écris:
“schlanke finger näher den klängen als der luft.”
Those tender fingers, that seem to be more close to the sounds than to the air, what does that mean? It means a lot of things and I leave that to the imagination of the reader. The fingers are playing a cello perhaps, and as they touch the strings they move through the air but they are already with the sounds that the instrument will produce. Or the fingers are playing a trumpet, and they are closer to the resulting sound than to the air that flows below them. Or the fingers belong to lovers who touch each other’s lips while they whisper something. Or the fingers are dead and the person whose body lies there has gone to another dimension where sounds replace matter. The line is, by the way, written by the 18th-century German poet, L.E. KIMA (1779-1869).